Democrats squabble over jobs bill

Democrats from the president on down say jobs are their No. 1 priority, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid expects to announce details of a bill this week. But a squabble among Senate Democrats is complicating early efforts to bring a bill to the floor.

Sens. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Dick Durbin of Illinois have been working intensely on a jobs bill for more than a month, talking with relevant committee leaders and other members and dispatching aides to dozens of other meetings in the hopes of crafting a bill that could get through the Senate quickly.

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And when they walked into a meeting in the office of Reid (D-Nev.) on Jan. 22, they thought they were about to cross the finish line — the Dorgan-Durbin plan would be blessed by the small group of senators in the room, presented to the full Democratic Caucus on Jan. 28 and then taken straight to the floor for a vote.

But Montana Sen. Max Baucus had other ideas.

The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, where the health care bill was debated for months last year, surprised the senators gathered in Reid’s office by suggesting he wanted a chance to mark up portions of the bill under his committee’s jurisdiction before it went to the floor, according to several people who attended the meeting.

“Everybody was caught off guard,” said a Democrat in the room, granted anonymity to speak candidly about a private meeting.

One Senate Democratic source said even though Baucus had endorsed the Dorgan-Durbin proposal, he was pinpointing ideas in their plan and advocating moving specific items first — including some that aren’t in the jurisdiction of the Finance Committee. He later indicated that he would be willing to move the bill directly to the floor if top Democrats agreed to that approach.

In the meeting, two attendees later said, Durbin seemed skeptical about going Baucus’s route, questioning why money for states, firefighters and police should be left out of the first package.

No consensus was reached, and Reid told the senators — some of whom were clearly frustrated — to think it over and come up with a revised strategy, sources later said.

After several follow-up meetings, Reid now appears to be on track to announcing a bill this week. But senior Democrats signaled late last week that they were still trying to zero in on the process, the substance and the message for their first jobs bill.

“Sen. Reid asked us to move forward, to gather ideas for the entire caucus and put together a program,” Durbin, the majority whip, said of his work with Dorgan.

“At the same time, Sen. Baucus was looking for an opportunity to put a jobs bill through his Finance Committee. There’s overlap. Some things are in both packages. So we’re working with Sen. Reid now in terms of which package will move first [and] what it will include. There’s a lot of interest in both. I don’t know that we can do both.”

For now, Democrats say they are starting to coalesce around a hodgepodge of ideas, including one by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) to create a Social Security tax break for employers who hire unemployed workers; “Build America” bonds for infrastructure; extensions of COBRA and unemployment insurance and money for energy-efficient projects. And Democrats may add versions of a proposal, outlined by President Barack Obama, to give tax credits to small businesses for hiring and pay increases.